


Paper Airplanes

by chaineddove



Category: GetBackers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-09
Updated: 2006-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-01 02:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaineddove/pseuds/chaineddove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ban and Himiko have a philosophical discussion about cause and effect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Airplanes

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: Paper airplanes, the domino effect, coffee. Set just before Yamato's death. From what I understand, the curse manifests over time. And Yamato seems like the kind of brother who would force Himiko to go to school *LOL*

Himiko found Ban on the roof of their building, his legs hanging off into space, smoking and staring moodily at the skyline. “I knew you’d be here.” After a moment, she set down her schoolbag and sat with her back to his, bringing her knees up so she could rest her chin on them. She didn’t want to look out at the hazy air hanging above Shinjuku, so she stared at the rough cement beneath her instead. This wasn’t a very nice building; they had had to relocate in a hurry and there hadn’t been time for anything better. But at least there was a roof for Ban to come and sulk on.

“You sure know a lot, for a brat,” Ban growled from behind her; she felt the light tremor of his back against hers when his voice sounded. Someone had hung laundry up here, and it made snapping noises in the wind. She shivered a little, though Ban’s body was blocking the worst of the brisk autumn breeze.

“I’m not a brat, bastard,” she said, but there was little heat in the words. She didn’t want to fight with Ban — Yamato had already done it for her, today. “Stupid,” she added anyway, just for good measure.

She felt him shrug in annoyance. “If you’re here to tell me I’m stupid, you can go back downstairs now,” he told her.

“I didn’t come up here for you at all,” she snapped. “I just wanted some fresh air.” All the smoke from his cigarette had to be blowing back into his face. She didn’t know how he could stand it, but she didn’t say anything, because getting Ban to quit smoking would be like getting Yamato to quit smoking — impossible. “I brought my homework to do too, so you can go back to sulking and leave me alone.”

“I’m not sulking, brat.”

“Just be quiet.” She pulled out a notebook because she had said she was doing homework, so she had to make a show of it now. She didn’t understand why Yamato insisted she go to school whenever she could, but she had been completely unable to make him relent. Ban didn’t have to go, and Yamato had never tried to make him. She could get out of it when they had jobs, but whenever they had to lay low, Yamato always somehow came up with documents and it was off to school with her whether she liked it or not.

She stared at the pages which the breeze was ruffling with seeming impatience. They were covered with carelessly scrawled notes which she only vaguely remembered taking. “Oi, give me a sheet of paper,” his voice suddenly said behind her.

“You could say please,” she grumbled, but passed the notebook back. She wasn’t using it anyway. There was the sound of a sheet of paper being ripped out of the notebook, and then he stood suddenly, making her nearly lose her balance. She squawked, jumping back from the building’s edge, but he didn’t seem to have noticed. He was standing with his back to her, folding the paper. “What, origami?” she said with as much of a sneer as she could manage, when she was trying to climb to her feet without her stupid skirt blowing up over her ears. She always seemed to be finding reasons to hate school uniforms more and more. The one for this school was short, to boot.

He didn’t even look down at her and her awkward efforts to avoid being indecent. “I never learned that,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. Finishing his work, he tossed a crudely-made paper airplane into the air. It wobbled a bit with its frayed edges then got caught in the wind. Executing a surprisingly complex series of twists, it flew over the laundry lines, then spiraled into a nosedive and disappeared into the street below.

“I think we all did origami, at one point or another, as children,” Himiko mused. She finally got to her feet, brushing the dust off of her uniform. No use getting it dirty. Yamato would just make her wash it. “Paper cranes, at least. I guess the kids just made paper airplanes, where you grew up.” Wherever that was. Someplace in Europe, she thought. On their last job, Ban had spoken fluently liquid German, and she didn’t think it had been a Jagan making her hear things.

“I don’t know what the kids did where I grew up,” he said, and she knew instinctively that she had said something wrong. Yamato had admonished her before never to ask Ban about anything that didn’t have direct ties to the present, but sometimes she forgot. To fill the uncomfortable silence, she knelt and picked up her abused notebook, touching the ragged edge of the missing page. Something about ancient Japanese poetry; she vaguely remembered that lecture. It had been very beautiful and very useless. Ban got more out of that sort of thing than she ever had, actually.

“I wonder how far it will fly,” she mused.

“It wasn’t very sturdy,” Ban said.

“But the wind is very strong,” she said quietly. “Maybe it will fly into someone’s window. Maybe they’ll unfold it and take what’s written on it as a sign of some kind.”

“Maybe they’ll take it as a sign that whoever threw it in their window is secretly out to psych them out with cryptic messages in bad handwriting before killing them,” Ban said darkly.

She laughed and tore another page out and folded it quickly. Her airplane wasn’t as well made as Ban’s, but the wind carried it away all the same. “It’s just a paper airplane. But maybe it means something to someone. It could change something.” She shrugged, feeling stupid, and said in a lighter tone, “Or maybe they _will_ decide someone’s out to kill them, and blow up this building for us. Then we could move again. I want my own room.”

“You’re spoiled,” Ban told her, but his mood seemed to be a little better.

“And you’re sulking,” she retaliated immediately. “Besides, isn’t it just as realistic to say that it will change something as it is to say that it won’t? Something about a butterfly flapping its wings over the ocean…”

Ban laughed, as she had hoped he would. “Beaning someone over the head with a paper airplane and pissing him off enough to blow up our building is more like a disastrous lineup of dominos. The butterfly effect is more like… you sneeze, and the Limitless Fortress over there explodes.”

“That’s even more ridiculous than — than — oh for the love of — _atchoo!_ ” Ban collapsed in hysterical laugher as she looked up at him, wide-eyed, then towards the hulking mass of the Limitless Fortress in the distance. Fortunately, it all seemed to be in one piece. “Damn it, you bastard, how did you do that!?”

“It’s cold up here, and that skirt is barely long enough to be legal,” Ban replied through his chuckles. “Come on, kid, let’s go downstairs before you destroy anything else.”

“I didn’t destroy anything!” she shouted, following him to the fire escape. “You’re the one who ripped up my notebook!”

“And you blew up the Limitless Fortress,” he said in that infuriating tone of voice which was uniquely Ban and always managed to make her bristle like a territorial cat.

“It’s perfectly fine!”

To her fury, he reached over and mussed her hair, which was already a tangle from the wind. “These things take time. By the time it happens, only you and I will know that it was a~ll your fault.”

She tried to hit him with her schoolbag, but he dodged easily, jumping into their kitchen window from the fire escape like some kind of monkey. Cursing, she followed with a little less grace, due to the fact that she was still trying to keep decent, somehow. The kitchen was full of the rich and faintly bitter smell of coffee. Yamato stood by the stove, his eyes guarded, and Himiko felt the next expletive die in her throat. At least, she reasoned, he didn’t look as frightening as he had when she had come home, and at least Ban had been joking with her just moments ago, so he couldn’t possibly go into another towering rage.

“Here,” her brother said after a long moment, pushing a cup into Ban’s hands. “I thought you would be cold after being up there so long.” Ban looked at him over the rims of his sunglasses, and Himiko could tell that he was considering. Yamato didn’t care for coffee, and neither did she, but Ban loved it, and so this was probably as close to an apology as her brother was going to come. After a moment, Ban lifted the cup to his lips and sipped, and the tension seemed to pour out of Yamato’s body. Now he just looked pathetically relieved.

“Himiko?” he asked, turning away from Ban. “Would you like a cup too?”

“Sure.” The first bitter sip made her grimace, but she drank the cup to the bottom, tasting the reconciliation that came with it. Somehow, she promised herself, things were going to be all right. Nothing was going to change; they weren’t going to topple like dominos or be ripped apart by the hurricane caused by some careless butterfly or anything else. They were going to stay in this kitchen, warm and wrapped in the scent of coffee, and Ban wasn’t going to sit on the edge of a building as if he wished he could jump off of it, and Yamato wasn’t going to terrify her into fleeing his company ever again. She shivered lightly, wondering if someone throwing a paper airplane somewhere could bring her makeshift family back to normal. Or destroy it completely.

“Oi, kid, why so stressed?” Ban asked.

“I’m just thinking about dominos,” she said, and made herself smile carelessly. “And how I can just push you off the roof the next time you tear up my homework.”

“OI!”

Yamato burst into laughter and she grinned. Everything was normal, after all.


End file.
